


It Was Meant to Be an Ending

by darksidereylo



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, fucking sad shit idk i needed to get this off my chest lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 06:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13140933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darksidereylo/pseuds/darksidereylo
Summary: The first time Rey & Kylo Ren Force Skype after TLJ. Everyone is sad and overwhelmed! Short lil something.





	It Was Meant to Be an Ending

When Rey closed the door in Kylo’s face, she had meant it to be final.

 _Close the door. Shut him out. Get him out of my head,_ she thought as the Falcon door sealed shut. Rey’s wish was granted, and Ben Solo’s face dissolved from view as their connection faded.

The weight of the events that had transpired on the Supremacy and Crait threatened to sink into Rey’s body. Giving in, Rey slumped to the floor and began to shake.

She had felt Luke become one with the Force. She didn’t know how. Rey knew he hadn’t left the island, and she knew his death was peaceful. It was right. But why and how?

Snoke was dead. Ben had killed him...a strange pain seared through her chest at the thought of Ben Solo. 

_Kylo Ren_ had killed him, she corrected herself.

Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber was in pieces. The Resistance was on the run.

But there were still good things in the universe, she reminded herself as she pressed her cheek on the cool metal of the Falcon. Finn was safe, Leia was still alive. 

Rey straightened, shoulders still slumped with exhaustion, and made her way towards the lounge to greet the others. The Resistance needed her, and Rey knew she had to be strong.

 

***

Kylo could feel Hux’s impatience from outside the Resistance’s makeshift briefing room. He could hear the marching and rummaging of the Stormtroopers, hear the Captains shouting orders.

Rey, and the Resistance, had gone. The dice from Han Solo’s ship had faded from his hand. Kylo remembered Skywalker, and felt a cold fury wash over him. 

Skywalker had projected himself and made Kylo look like a fool. Whoever had been piloting Han Solo’s piece of garbage had made him look like a fool. 

It was time to let old things die, but he couldn’t get rid of them. Not Rey, who he felt like a prickling itch on the back of his mind always. Not his father, who sat like a stone in his stomach. Not Skywalker, who had betrayed him. 

For the first time in his life, Kylo felt an uncontrollable desire to cut himself off from the Force. He didn’t want to feel the void that Rey had left when she shut the door. He remembered stretching out his hand to her, deigning to ask, to beg her to join him. Please, he had said. Embarrassment and anger, longing and resentment, quaked inside him. She could have been with him now, both of them far from here. Starting over.

She had called him Ben.

Shaking with what he hoped would be interpreted as anger, Kylo stood. Fists still clenched, he strode out of the briefing room to confer with General Hux.

The Supreme Leader of the First Order could not be seen mourning those who were not there.

***

“Leia, Snoke is dead.” 

Rey sat facing Leia in the midst of what was left with the Resistance, their conversation being drowned out by the chitchat and exclamations of the beings around them.

Leia looked down at Luke’s lightsaber broken in half, gingerly picking it up from Rey’s hands and placing it next to them on the seat. 

“What happened?” Leia asked, gently gripping Rey’s hand.

Rey wasn’t ready to explain everything that had happened. Beyond that, she didn’t even know how to explain her connection with Ben. She was sure that Leia would understand, even if Luke had not...but there was something holding her back. Rey acknowledged and brushed off the voice in her head that wanted to keep her connection with Ben to herself, so it could be hers only. Snoke, who had claimed to bridge their minds, was dead. Luke was gone. The only people who still knew about the Force connecting her and Ben….were her and Ben.

Her and Kylo Ren.

For the first time since Snoke’s throne room, Rey’s eyes filled with tears. Blinking furiously, huffing out a breath, she said, “Your son killed him.”

Leia was silent, brown eyes downcast on their intertwined hands. A sad smile came across her face.  
Rey waited, expecting Leia to ask her more. Ask her why Kylo had killed Snoke, how Rey knew. 

But as Leia raised her eyes to meet Rey’s, Rey knew that Leia didn’t need the details. Not yet. What had happened on Crait was enough to know that Ben wasn’t coming back.

Ben isn’t coming back.

_Ben!_

Rey let the tears fall silently down her face, as Leia pulled her into an embrace that felt more like home than anything she had ever experienced in her life.

It reminded her of when she had touched Ben’s hand.

***

Kylo lay in his quarters aboard the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer, biding his time until he had to meet Hux and some of the admirals to plan the First Order’s next move. Kylo couldn’t remember the last time he slept. Every time he closed his eyes, it was a loop: his father, his mother, Luke, Rey. 

_Rey._

She had had left a void. How that had happened, Kylo didn’t know. How this scavenger, this garbage picker, had gotten under his skin. She shouldn’t have been his equal. She was nothing, her parents were no one. Rey came from nowhere.

“But not to me.” He had said. He had meant it, but now he regretted it. He regretting showing her that much of him. Now she was gone, and had taken that part of him with her.

For the first time since the Supremacy, where he and Rey were fighting side by side, in rough synchrony, Kylo reached for the Force. He turned on his side on his bed, staring into the fluorescent near-darkness. 

He could feel it. The deepness of the dark parts of the Force, the shimmering of the light. The cycle, the balance. Him and Rey, fighting. He could see it as clear as if he were still there with her.

*

Rey had spent hours talking with Finn and Poe, hearing about their adventures, learning about Rose, and those the Resistance had lost. She had finally left them, succumbing to her exhaustion to find a corner to curl up in. 

She wandered around the sleeping bodies of dozens of Resistance fighters, feeling a flicker of hope that everything would be okay, no matter how dire everything seemed now. 

All the bunks were taken by the wounded. Finally, Rey found her way to the opening of an escape pod. She happened to know that this pod wasn’t functional and was currently serving as a small storage area. She cleared a space on the ground, lying with her feet sticking through the doorway and her satchel under her head.

Rey clutched the broken pieces of Luke’s lightsaber to her chest, feeling the peculiar warmth of the crystal and the cold of the metal near her skin.

Despite her exhaustion, Rey couldn’t close her eyes. The whirring of the Falcon, the murmuring of the Resistance, the memories of the recent past were swirling about her at light speed.

 _Breathe,_ she thought in Luke’s voice. _Just breathe._ With each shuddering breath, she felt the Force around her, inside her. Death, life, rebirth, stagnation. An uncertain calm fell over her. 

The sounds around her began to fade. 

*

Kylo could no longer see him and Rey fighting in his mind, and he could no longer hear the harsh noises of the Star Destroyer. 

The air had been sucked out of the room. There was a shift. She was there.

*

The only sound was the sound of their breath. Rey didn’t get up from where she lay, because she could see Kylo was lying down too. He looked as exhausted as she felt; dark bags under his eyes, his black hair tangled and lying stark against his pale skin. 

Rey expected to feel rage, or disappointment. And she did, but it was remote. Much closer, Rey felt an overwhelming sense of peace. When she shut the door of the Falcon, she had meant it to be an ending. Because that’s what Luke would have told her to do, what Leia would have told her to do. Finn, too. 

But that’s not what Rey wanted. 

*

Rey was in front of him, clear and close as she had ever been. Not running from him like he thought she would, not blocking him out. Kylo knew that he should feel betrayal, embarrassment, rage...perhaps contrition. He didn’t know what he felt, but his eyelids fluttered in relief to see her in front of him; The Force connecting them without Snoke, and despite the fact that they had chosen to stand on opposite sides. Dark and light.  
She looked beautiful, wherever she was. And she was safe. She held his gaze in silence. 

Kylo’s eyes narrowed as he pictured her surrounded by the scum she called friends on his father’s old ship where she likely lay. 

The annoyance passed like a shadow. He looked at this girl, this scavenger...the last jedi. 

Rey.

A piece of hair had fallen into her face. He reached forward, not knowing what he was doing until he was already brushing the hair out of her eyes and behind her ear. He let his fingers linger.

Rey’s lips parted in surprise. The touch of Ben’s fingertips against her skin felt like a reverberating spark. His eyes were traveling over her face, from her eyes to her cheek where his fingers were still resting, to her lips. 

Overwhelmed with everything she couldn’t change, the circumstances, Ben’s mind, the Force connecting them, Rey closed her eyes and leaned into his touch.

Ben cradled her cheek in his hand, brushing his thumb across her face to rest on her lip. It was a strange kind of touching, a shimmering and magical kind spanning light years that only the Force could create.

The only sounds in the air were his breath, and Rey’s, which echoed within the connection around them.

The last jedi and the Supreme Leader of the First Order, he couldn’t help but think bitterly. She was right before him. He had promised Skywalker that he would destroy her. And the Resistance, and all of it.

But not today.

*

Rey opened her eyes to see Ben scanning her face, looking at her like this might be the last time they ever saw each other. And it could be. Neither of them knew how long this connection would last, both now and in the future. 

Rey raised her hand to Ben’s face, avoiding the scar that she had made, running her hand through his hair. 

She felt a sudden surge of anger. Ben Solo was gone, and this man in front of her had killed him. Not only that, but Rey had tried to save Ben. He just didn’t want to be saved.

It was never her job to bring Ben Solo home, but she felt the weight of the loss crushing her as she gazed upon the face of Kylo Ren. Ben. He was both and neither and she hated him for what he had done.

She didn’t realize she was crying until the spark fingers of this man were trying to brush her tears away.

Rey felt the connection slipping away, as Ben’s face shifted in and out of focus before her. 

Without knowing why, and while knowing nothing this man could do would right the wrongs he had done, Rey closed the distance between them. She brushed her lips against his, her eyes sinking shut to try to feel anything, anything.

*

Her kiss felt like a sparkling shadow, a whisper. He couldn’t feel the warmth of her lips, but knew they were there. He could feel her anger. He grabbed her hair, felt the mimic of softness under his hands. He felt her fading.

With a jolt, the air was back in the room. The sounds of the ship came to life around him. Before he knew what had happened, his cot had flown across the room, the desk was split in two, and his lightsaber was ignited in his hand.

Rey was gone, and Kylo Ren was alone.

**Author's Note:**

> My first Star Wars ficlet. I only know one truth: I will die shipping Reylo. Needed to get this post-TLJ angst out of my mind and force it (ha ha) onto some other people.
> 
> xoxo Lo Ren


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